While reading a PDF version of Sigma Pi Fraternity, International‘s Emerald magazine from October 1919 (Volume 6, Issue 3), I came across the brief article below, written by Harold K. Bowen.

As a clarifying aside, Brother Bowen is listed as being from “Delta-Xi,” though that is not possible using the chapter designations that the Fraternity uses today since the Fraternity’s Delta-Xi Chapter was founded at Southern Utah University in 1970 and this article was published in 1919. My assumption is that Brother Bowen is from Xi Chapter at the University of Iowa (the Fraternity’s records show a Ralph Bowen initiated into Xi Chapter back in 1918) which was part of the Delta Province at the time. Today, the Fraternity uses geographic demarcations to name provinces (Heartland Province, New England Province, South Atlantic Province, etc.), but this was not always the case – in the early 1900s, Sigma Pi used Greek letters to name the provinces.

The information that Brother Bowen provides in his write-up is interesting from a historical perspective, but also deeply relevant to keep in mind during formal recruitment. Here is Brother Bowen’s advice that you should remember when considering men for membership in Sigma Pi:

BADGE MEN OR CROWD MEN?Harold K. Bowen, Delta-Xi

Sigma Pi does not seek to claim any man who desires to enter our Fraternity that he may merely wear our badge. Such a man if received within our fold would prove undesirable owing to his peculiar make-up. A self-individual within a fraternity is out of his environment and it would require more than a badge to convince him that he was in the right environment. He could not possess that capacity of wanting things for his fellowmen and would never sacrifice his interests or desires that his brothers might be benefited thereby.

Occasionally we recognize a fraternity man by his badge, only to conclude much to the discredit of his fraternity that he lacks that requisite quality of a true fraternity man, that of being a good mixer. Though he may have acquired much in wealth or honor he would know little of men and their ways. Anyone desirous for self alone could not be recognized as an authority on men and would never be considered by the world as one of its spokesmen.

Fraternity men should be crowd men and as such feel more at home when rubbing elbows with their brother men of the crowd. It is not easy to have courage for others when they are not interested in what should be our common endeavors. However, the men who achieve in this world are those who possess the courage to want things for others. They are not for self. (Nor is success measured by self.)

Sigma Pi is for all of us when all of us cooperate to make it better and bigger. Badge men should not seek to be Sigma Pis. Sigma Pi wants crowd men.

As is so often the case with our forefathers in Sigma Pi Fraternity, Brother Bowen writes eloquently about what the Fraternity needs to thrive. He distinguishes between Badge Men and Crowd Men with the primary difference being that Badge Men join a fraternity simply to join. Or, as was common in the 1910s when this was written, some men joined a fraternity just to show off the group’s badge on their chest instead of earning the privilege of wearing that badge everyday that they were honored to be a member.

Do you know someone like that in your chapter? Someone who is more concerned about being a “frat guy” than about living a contemporary revival of the storied history behind the letters on his chest?

Today, think of the guys who come out for rush just because they want to be a “frat guy” and not necessarily because they want to join something bigger than themselves. These are the opposite of the Crowd Men that Brother Bowen notes in his essay. He says that Crowd Men are those who “have courage for others when they are not interested in what should be our common endeavors.” What does this mean? In today’s terms, Crowd Men are those who are constantly working to improve their local chapter, the larger Greek community, and the plight of collegians across the country. They take an interest in what is important for the Fraternity, but they also see the larger battles taking place across our culture and work to improve the standing of their friends, fraternity brothers, and colleagues in the greater struggle.

One of Brother Bowen’s final comments resonated with me in a particular way. He writes, “Sigma Pi is for all of us when all of us cooperate to make it better…” We need more men – young and old alike – who are committed to cooperating to truly making the Fraternity better for all of us, but more importantly – better for the next generation of Sigma Pi men who have yet to join us.

One of the many fascinating elements of reading past issues of The Emerald is generating a basic idea of the climate within a Sigma Pi chapter during the early years of the fraternity. I recently finished reading the January 1916 issue of The Emerald which featured a lengthy update on the Kappa Chapter of Sigma Pi and its history at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Temple University around the turn of the century

What I liked best about reading this update from the Kappa Chapter is that they told a wonderful story regarding the history of their chapter. And I might add that they told their story in a beautifully written piece where the language was rich and the content was deep. There are no writers today who put pencil to paper (or fingers to keyboard) in as beautiful, meaningful, and precise a language as what I have read in the old issues of The Emerald.

Some other interesting notes and observations from the January 1916 issue of The Emerald:

Who Should Be Elected to the Grand Council?
This is of particular interest to me since I am running for the Grand Council next month. There was an editorial in The Emerald that gives good advice on the type of person who should not be elected to the Grand Council. The magazine says: “…the distance between good intentions and actual results from hard work is so infinite, that to elect or reelect a man simply because he appears to love the Fraternity; to propose the name of a man simply to get chapter representation or to hold on to a man who has proven his worthlessness, not only injures the Fraternity at large but seriously handicaps the Grand Chapter.”

What to Expect at Convocation
Next month’s Convocation will be the eighth one that I have attended. Before attending my first Convocation in 2002, I had no idea what to expect. Well, for brothers who find themselves in a similar position to the one that I was in 14 years ago, here is what the editors of The Emerald wrote to prepare Sigma Pi Fraternity for Convocation 100 years ago: “The coming Convocation is the logical and appointed time to shoulder all your grievances, protests or recommendations and go after the ‘powers’ without gloves. All delegates should come ‘armed to the teeth’ with sound arguments to propel their pet hobbies through the ranks of the ‘enemy.’ The man who has to stop to think is going to find it rough sledding.”

What is the Executive Council?
In this issue as in prior issues, The Emerald lists both the Grand Council as well as something called the Executive Council. It seems to me like the so-called Executive Council is either the group of people who worked for the fraternity at the time or an expanded governing body of volunteers, which we sorely need today. Seven Grand Council members just does not cut it in 2016 – we need more.

The “Father of Chapters”
The brothers at the Kappa Chapter referred to themselves as the “Father of Chapters” because they set up two iterations of the Delta Chapter at the University of Pennsylvania and the Theta Chapter at Penn State University. Back in 1916, there were only 9 active chapters so Kappa Chapter’s claim was pretty legitimate.

Who was the First Grand Sage?
Throughout their update, the Kappa Chapter talks about so-and-so being elected as the Chancellor of the chapter. Based on what I’ve read, it sounds like the position of Sage used to be called Chancellor. At some point in their update, they mention that Kappa Chapter alumnus M. Atlee Ermold attended Convocation at the end of October 1910. During that Convocation, Ermold was elected as the Grand Sage of the fraternity and was “the first man in Sigma Pi to hold that title.” Interesting. So were Francis L. Lisman and Winford L. Mattoon not the “Grand Sage” but, instead, the National Chancellors of Sigma Pi Fraternity?

No Love for the Herald!
Incidentally, they refer to the chapter’s Executive Council as the Sage, First Counselor, Second Counselor, Third Counselor, Fourth Counselor, and “fifth member.” No love for the Herald position back in 1916!

Fall and Spring Convocations – Not Summer
Also, whenever Convocation is referenced in the old issues of The Emerald, it never takes place during the summer months. Rather, the Convocations seem to have taken place during the months of April and October. Why did this change? The fraternity appears to be so disconnected during the summer months and most of today’s undergraduates are busy working summer jobs to pay increasing tuition, textbook, and off-campus living costs that it seems like holding an event during the school year might actually generate higher attendance along with some cost savings. Who knows? It’s probably worth some research. Here is a screenshot of the invitation to the 1916 Convocation that was included in the magazine:

Kappa Takes a Shot at New Jersey!
As a New Jersey guy I have to take issue with Kappa Chapter’s comment that one of the negatives about a recent initiate is that “he hails from Camden, NJ, that barnacle which clings to Philadelphia’s water line.” How dare you?! We didn’t even have any New Jersey chapters back then to defend our good name!

The Worthiness of Inter-Fraternity Councils
I laughed out loud after reading this line in one of the editorials: “We sometimes wonder whether local Interfraternity Councils are of any real value or not.” Ha ha! Oh, if the editors of the magazine could only see some of the IFCs on our campuses today…

That is all that I have for this review of the January 1916 edition of the magazine. If you are interested in this type of stuff, then I encourage you to check out the online archive of The Emerald by clicking here!

Over the last several months, I’ve spent some time reading through past issues of our fraternity’s national magazine, The Emerald. There are some truly inspiring words in these magazines. And those words are spoken in a tone of voice that we have too quickly forgotten in today’s fraternity world. That lapse in memory is not confined to Sigma Pi Fraternity, but to all of today’s fraternity men who opt to willfully disregard the decades of success that fraternities have achieved in building strong, tradition-minded, masculine men. Of course, in today’s world the very notions of traditionalism and masculinity are under attack so it’s no wonder that today’s fraternity men are so quick to bend (and, ultimately, break) to the incredulous, anti-male demands placed on them by those in perceived authority positions. More on that as we go along…

This is how the title of The Emerald magazine used to appear.

Here are some inspiring thoughts from Brother William D. Akers of Zeta Chapter, the sixth Grand Sage of Sigma Pi Fraternity. Incidentally, Past Grand Sage (PGS) Akers served as Grand Sage for a 4 year period; why is today’s Sigma Pi Fraternity seemingly so against Grand Sages serving more than one, 2-year term? That might be something to think about, I guess. In any event, PGS Akers delivered the comments below to an assembly of Delta and Kappa Chapter undergraduates in 1914, while he was serving as the fraternity’s Grand Fourth Counselor.

“In college life as well as in the business world there is no room for the passive type of man. A dead man and a lazy one are exactly alike, except the lazy one takes up more room.”
I’m sure that we’ve all heard several iterations of this idea over the years – that if one is not being a productive member of society, then they’re not really living life and might as well be dead. Or that if an employee is not pulling his own weight, then they are actually dead weight and should be fired. I believe PGS Akers’ point is that as fraternity men, we must be active in the affairs of our chapter. For the undergraduates reading this – don’t get your defenses up just yet! Too often, today’s young men see a call for involvement as an unwanted burden on their freedom or a tax on their time. That’s not what “involvement” should be, regardless of what instruction you may have received locally. To avoid being the “passive type of man” that PGS Akers refers to, today’s undergraduate man just needs to avail himself of the activities that his chapter should already be engaged in. For example, if your chapter is mixing with XYZ Sorority on Thursday night, then go to the mixer! And if you have a few free minutes during the day that Thursday, then why not ask the Social Chairman if there is some small piece of the planning for the night’s activities that you can help him complete?

Further, to avoid the passivity that PGS Akers warns us about, today’s undergraduate man should attend his chapter’s weekly meeting, philanthropic, and service events. Again, these should be part of your daily activities as an active member in your chapter in the first place. This isn’t a call to new action, but rather a call to existing action.

Some Delta-Beta Chapter brothers hanging out at a chapter BBQ.

Where PGS Akers’ comment begins to challenge us, I believe, is when it is applied to the larger population and its growing number of phobias and general mania around fraternities and fraternity men. Strong undergraduate leaders are not the ones who simply take what they’re given and regurgitate it for the next “leader” to read and hopefully do the same. Strong undergraduate leaders take the information that they’re given, question it in a thorough and independent manner, and then decide which elements of the material are best able to advance his chapter to its goals and his brothers to their goals. The most important part of that decision-making, though, is when the leader takes the material that he has found to be bogus, biased, or not worthy of propagation and tries to ascertain why it was included in the first place. Was this information included in an effort to disrupt a positive, yet traditional environment? Was it an oversight on the part of the person providing the material? Is it a poorly-veiled attempt to fundamentally change the perspective of the leader and his brothers? And if the answer to that question is “yes,” then why is the leader’s perspective trying to be modified? The answers to these questions (and more) should determine how the leader’s next actions.

“We Greeks, and I mean to speak with modesty, are the highest type of American manhood.”
This comment should hold true today as well, though I fear the forces of anti-masculinity and anti-traditionalism which are ripping through our culture are too often preventing fraternity men from exhibiting the highest type of American manhood, that is, traditional masculinity. The conflicting, often biased voices in today’s conversation on what it means to be a fraternity man often leave fraternity men confused at best or uncaring and aloof at worst. Today’s young fraternity leaders need to cut through the nonsense and demand clear, concise language from their leaders. If they suspect someone from their university or one of their elected leaders in the fraternity is communicating in double-speak, then they need to stop the conversation until the party they are speaking with plays fair.

That is the method by which today’s young fraternity leaders need to position themselves if they want to represent the highest type of American manhood. Be tellers of truth and promoters of real equality. Do not allow someone – anyone – to be held to a lesser standard because of their position, gender, race, socioeconomic class, etc. Fraternity men should only work pleasantly in those systems where all people are treated equally. However, what I think most fraternity men will find is that today’s college environment is stacked against them because of their skin color, gender, and/or choice to embrace a traditional view of fraternalism. Fraternity men must work to change that growing bias because bias in any form is unacceptable – particularly on college campuses.

“[Those who are jealous of fraternity membership] view us through glasses which magnify our sins and fail to even show our good points.”
Boy, it’s like PGS Akers gave this speech in 2014, not 100 years earlier! How true is this statement? Earlier in his speech, PGS Akers describes the people who are consistently anti-fraternity as “individuals who fight us through jealousies.” What is most distressing about PGS Akers’ comment here is that it is so relevant to today’s hostile environment for young men, and young fraternity men in particular. Also disturbing is that if you apply PGS Akers’ statement to any aspect of life outside of fraternity membership, then you’re likely to get a similar outcome. Imagine this being spoken in 2015 and replacing “fraternity membership” with “investment banker” or “tech millionaire.” The point is that when you’re a fraternity man, you are likely receiving a considerable amount of seen and unseen anger from a population that is jealous of your very existence because of what your existence represents in their known-only-to-them minds. It’s hard for us, as leaders, to take the comments of Akers’ jealous populations seriously because they are spoken from a place that we can’t enter nor can we innately understand (nor should we attempt to understand). Most of their comments are spoken from a place of jealously and an attempt to diminish you by neglecting all of the good you provide while highlighting your negatives.

My Delta-Beta Chapter guys at a fashion show they put together for autistic students.

My chapter at Monmouth University has had to deal with this weak-mindedness in at least one Greek Advisor. This individual loved to denigrate my undergraduates’ accomplishments and took every opportunity to do so, which were numerous since the chapter was winning many awards during that time – most notably winning Sigma Pi Fraternity’s Most Outstanding Chapter Award (#1 in the nation in their tier). He loved to put my guys down because his graduate school indoctrinated him to promote an extreme position held by too many student affairs employees. And that position is that they should receive external undergraduate successes by challenging the students do to more and reach higher. Do more? Reach higher than #1 in the nation? Really? For those student affairs employees who may be reading this commentary, please take this former Greek Advisor’s pigheadedness as a lesson. Sometimes the student affairs employees need to check their biases and jealousies at the door and simply say, “Wow – you guys did a great job! We’re proud of you! Congratulations!”

“To know that you have warm personal friends, who are intensely interested in you and in your success is one of the greatest of motive forces, and makes us do our best.”
Preach on, PGS Akers! Isn’t this the very core of motivating forces that propels fraternities forward in the right direction? Namely, that no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you have a group of individuals behind you “who are intensely interested in you.” Further, they are intensely interested in your success! What greater squad is there to roll with than people who actually care about you, right?!

For my part as an alumni advisor, I’ve increasingly become intensely interested in the professional successes of my young alumni. When I hear about one of my young alumni upgrading to a new company, receiving a promotion, or getting a raise, I find a growing level of pride in their accomplishments. In a similar manner, when one of my young alumni decides that they want to go back to school to earn a master’s degree, I become proud of their decision to expand their academic pursuits. And it’s that pursuit of excellence – the pursuit of being something bigger and greater than you are today – that I find so great and admirable!

A group of my undergraduates at this past May’s graduation.

A word to the undergraduate Sigma Pi leaders reading this commentary: you will not receive this type of lasting, post-graduation support from your Greek Advisor or from any of the negative voices that you hear while you’re running your chapter. As PGS Akers instructs us, the negative voices only want to magnify your sins and fail to recognize your good contributions to society. Lucky for us, we’re members of a true brotherhood of men. We celebrate each other’s successes and share the aggravation of each other’s setbacks. Those on the outside don’t understand that connection, but they do understand how to criticize their personal interpretation of that connection. Let them spew their hate because it further degrades any perceived authority that they assumed to have in the first place.

“…the strength of our fraternity and the future of the fraternity are in your hands.”
These words are as true today as they were when PGS Akers spoke them in 1914. Remember, when he delivered this speech PGS Akers was speaking to a group of assembled undergraduates from Delta and Kappa chapters. And even though we have over 100 more chapters today and we are a much more complex organization working in a much more biased environment, the truth is now and remains that the future of the fraternity is in the hands of our undergraduates. In a very real sense, as a group the undergraduate votes at our biennial Convocation far outnumber the combined votes of our alumni clubs, past grand officers, and other individuals who are allowed to vote during the business meetings. In a much more theoretical sense, the future of Sigma Pi Fraternity rests in the hands of those undergraduates who are willing to stand up to the hypocrisies that they face on a daily basis. Those undergraduates who are willing to question, in a gentlemanly manner, those with perceived authority regarding their hypocrisies are the ones who will lead this fraternity into the future.

“…the duties of our latest initiate are of more importance to the Fraternity than those of the Grand Sage. While the former may have no official duties to attend to, he is actively engaged, either in building up or tearing down our reputation, a matter of more vital importance than any official business could be.”
This comment follows the one immediately listed above as a further indication that the future of the fraternity is set by the undergraduates, not our alumni. Sure, our alumni may be in elected or hired staff positions, but the work of the fraternity has always existed at the active chapter level. This doesn’t take away from the many great and varied efforts of our alumni clubs and alumni volunteers. Our alumni volunteers, especially, are the workhorses of Sigma Pi Fraternity. Theirs is a labor of love and, if done correctly, their work bears more and better fruit than any other effort put forth by any other constituency in the fraternity.

Some of my Spring 2015 initiates from the Delta-Beta Chapter.

Yet still, the people who are most important to the fraternity’s future are not those with the shiny medals around their necks or the ones who get up each morning to go to work for Sigma Pi. The most important people in the fraternity are the ones who were just initiated into the brotherhood and have their entire lives ahead of them as men of Sigma Pi. Will they be actively engaged in building their chapter and, through that effort, making the national fraternity stronger? Or will they be one of the better-off-dead lazy men that PGS Akers notes in one of the earlier quotes cited above?

“Sigma Pi wants MEN, – men of brain and brawn, clean men, men who love and honor their Mother and Father, these are the men who will love and honor our Fraternity.”
During recruitment season, I wish that our leaders promoted this quote more to our undergraduates than anything else. In the last 10 or so years, many student affairs employees have co-opted Phired Up’s “values-based” recruitment model and demeaned it into becoming yet another battering ram to use against traditional fraternities and sororities. By “traditional fraternities and sororities,” I am talking about those chapters who look to find certain characteristics in the people that they recruit. That is, to find groups of kindred minds who are diverse by their origins and life experiences, but share common characteristics that are valued by the members of the chapter. Sigma Pi chapters should take PGS Akers’ suggestion and look for young men to join our fraternity who are MEN! Find guys who live clean lives, take care of themselves, and honor tradition both in their families and within the fraternity. These days, society is too quick to rewrite history in an effort to make tradition always appear biased, angry, or discriminatory. And while that may be true in some cases, the history of thousands of fraternity and sorority chapters across the country is not a history of discrimination. Even for those chapters who were founded by organizations that had exclusionary policies at their national levels – those policies no longer exist and likely haven’t existed for decades.

Today’s undergraduates do not need to be brow-beaten into thinking that they are exclusionary and that they need to take a more inclusive approach to recruitment. That’s nothing more than extremist jargon that seeks to dismantle traditional forms of masculinity (and femininity, for that matter). As PGS Akers states – Sigma Pi needs to recruit MEN.

Here are some other interesting points that I found in the January 1915 issue of The Emerald:

The Directory of the Fraternity lists the 6 Grand Counselors and then it lists an “Executive Council” that includes 4 additional men who appear to be in leadership positions. I’ve said for a long time that our national organization is hindered by the fact that we only have 7 members on our national board of trustees (the Grand Council plus the Past Grand Sage). Organizations of our size should have 11 to 15 contributing members on our board of trustees. It appears that the founders and early leaders of our fraternity well understood that need for increased engagement and more hands to help move the fraternity forward. I wonder what happened that the number of elected leaders was reduced? We should go back to a larger number of members on our board of trustees.

The Delta Chapter called PGS Akers the “Patrick Henry of Sigma Pi,” which is a really great compliment if you know American history.

One quote that I didn’t use from PGS Akers was, “…wells of fraternalism whose waters are brotherly devotion and loyalty to ideals.” I bring that up because I believe that people spoke and wrote much more beautifully 100 years ago. We live in a world where the word “literally” is bastardized and “like” is overused to death. Reading these old magazines is a great reminder of how wonderfully speakers spoke and writers wrote 100 years ago.

There’s a nice, two page profile of Byron R. Lewis in this issue of The Emerald. It was nice to read about the man who did so much to build the foundation of Sigma Pi Fraternity.

During this period in The Emerald‘s history, each issue was “sponsored” by a chapter of the fraternity. In other words, the bulk of this issue talks about the Phi chapter at the University of Illinois because this was the “Phi Number” issue of the magazine. There are some great pictures of the University of Illinois in the magazine and some discussion about campus history. I encourage the undergraduate members of Phi Chapter to take a look at this issue of The Emerald just for the 100 year old pictures of their campus.

This issue also marked the first update from the Delta Chapter of Sigma Pi Fraternity. According to their update, they started from the Mag Piis Club which was colonized into Sigma Pi in spring 1914. Our current Sigma Pi Manual (why isn’t it called the I Believe Manual any more?) lists Delta as inactive from 1913 to 1914. That doesn’t seem correct if we colonized them in spring 1914 and they were an active chapter by January 1915.

During this time, The Emerald featured a section called Exchanges. In this section, the magazine would reprint the best selections from other fraternities’ magazines, copies of speeches given as they related to fraternalism, and articles from national inter-fraternity conventions. Interesting idea – especially about the speeches.

Finally, a company named Schloss Manufacturing Company advertised on the back page of The Emerald. They were advertising Sigma Pi Greek letter banners for either 85 cents (an 18″ x 30″ banner) or $1.25 (a 24″ x 30″ banner). I think we’ve experienced a little bit of inflation since then!

I encourage everyone who has an interest in Sigma Pi Fraternity’s history to check out the online archive of old Emerald magazines. If you like this stuff, then they are a treasure trove of information!

One hundred years ago today, Sigma Pi Fraternity published Volume II, Number 1 of The Emerald magazine. You can see the simple yet elegant cover of that one hundred year-old issue below. I believe that looking back at what was printed in The Emerald one hundred years ago helps bring some of the current conversations in the Greek world into a more focused perspective.

The first thing that strikes me when I look at the one hundred year-old magazine is that the gentlemen who operated the Fraternity in 1914 had the foresight to charge a subscription fee! At the bottom of the cover page is a note that reads: “Subscription rates $1.00 per year in advance.” Over the years I’ve sat in on many conversations regarding the cost of producing The Emerald. Whenever the idea of charging a small annual fee for the magazine is brought up, it is shot down. Some argue that we promised our members that we wouldn’t charge them a subscription fee and others say that no one would pay it. Regardless of why we select not to charge a small subscription fee today, the initial operators of this fraternity were not afraid to charge each member a dollar for the privilege of receiving the national magazine.

The next thing that strikes me about The Emerald is that they list the house address and contact information for every single chapter of Sigma Pi right in the beginning of the magazine. Of course, there were only 9 active chapters back then, but it’s still a nice touch!

The Emerald begins to show some meat when we get to the Foreward. This line strikes me as relevant in the anti-fraternity, anti-male environment that many of our chapters operate in today: “It is our earnest wish that The Emerald may be effective in espousing the cause of the College Fraternity in general and of Sigma Pi in particular…” I wish that this was still a core focus area for our national organization. Sigma Pi Fraternity – and no national fraternity, for that matter – no longer makes it a basic cause to promote the virtues of college fraternity membership. Further and more specific to Sigma Pi, we do not do a good job of promoting our undergraduates’ incredible successes in mediums that have lasting cache. In other words, while we might tweet a congratulatory note or post an update on Facebook noting a job well done, we do not use our publications as methods of publicly promoting the many good works that are intrinsic to fraternity life. From time to time we print stories about successful Sigma Pi alumni in our national magazine, but we don’t take those stories to the masses. We don’t utilize our Fraternity-owned web assets (we have six different, official Sigma Pi blogs) as methods of regularly promoting the great value of membership in our fraternity. Do we promote the value of being a Sigma Pi or a member of a Greek organization every once in a while? Sure. Do we use these assets to promote Sigma Pi and Greek Life on a consistent, regular basis? No.

The mindset of the early members of our Fraternity was that of dealing from a position of strength. They didn’t cower or bend at the first anti-fraternity accusation hurled in their direction. No! Instead, they believed that Sigma Pi “fills a distinct want and supplies the requirements of a definite need in the lives of our college boys.” This line from The Emerald comes from an editorial that was reprinted in the magazine and talked about the great success of a young Sigma Pi Fraternity as it worked to grow a strong reputation in the Greek world. I was struck by this short editorial because it speaks unabashedly about the virtue of fraternity membership. There is no silent apology or tone of regret that we even exist! One hundred years ago, fraternity men didn’t apologize for being men, for being masculine, or for recognizing the value of mentoring and one-on-one personal development that takes place within the walls of a chapter house.

Today the fraternity world throws its collective hands in the air and says, “We can’t win!” when a grossly biased editorial or disgustingly negative article is written about us. There is no innate belief that we should vocally and/or forcefully stand up against attacks on our very existence. In place of that belief, we’ve promoted policies of placation to the loudest, angriest voices.

It’s shameful.

Some other random points that I picked up in this issue of The Emerald:

Did you know that the Fraternity voted to implement a National Memorial Day of Sigma Pi on the first Sunday of May each year? The Emerald says that “on this day each man should wear a small piece of crêpe under his pin, and services will be held in all Chapter houses of the Fraternity, honoring the beloved dead.” Seems like a nice tradition that we’ve forgotten and should reinstitute.

Province Archon visits to their chapters used to be paid for by the “Grand Treasury” and if they couldn’t afford it, then the province would have to chip in for the cost of the visit. Of course, this was before the traveling consultant program was implemented, so Province Archons must have provided the bulk of on-site training to the undergraduates.

At the Fourth Biennial Convocation it was decided that “the proper place for the badge of the Fraternity… is directly over the heart.” Just in case any of you were wondering – that’s what was decided by the first members of Sigma Pi!

There is an article titled On Solid Ground that includes a line which I believe is a forerunner of Sigma Pi Fraternity’s current ACE Project program. That line is, “fraternities are interested in and working for the aggrandizement of their alma mater and not for the purpose of exalting the fraternity above the college as a whole.” How about that? The spirit of the ACE Project uncovered one hundred years ago in our national magazine! Of course, I’m not sure if these words were actually written by a Sigma Pi brother (if I had to guess, I would say that they were not written by a Sigma Pi, but instead included as a larger report that was reprinted in The Emerald), but it’s still pretty impressive that the spirit of the ACE Project was promoted by Sigma Pi Fraternity before any of us were even born.

A final comment from Volume II, Number 1 of The Emerald that seems relevant to what many of us face in today’s anti-masculinity, anti-fraternity student life environment. There is a line in the magazine that says: “It is our conviction that when we trim the situation down to the psychology of the matter we have before us merely the battle of the ‘outs’ against the ‘ins’; that it is, in short, simple, common, every day, human nature.” The core of this statement is the possession of an inner knowledge that we should all have as members of Sigma Pi Fraternity. And that knowledge is that we are going to be attacked by those on the outside simply because they’re on the outside looking in. Undergraduates have many hokey sayings about fraternity life – one of which is that from the outside looking in, you can never understand it, but from the inside looking out, you can never explain it.

That is the position that we find ourselves in today.

The vocal, anti-male minority that uses the biased media to publish negative outlooks on the future of fraternities are nothing more than those same “outs.” And they’re angry for many reasons, not the least of which is the life of pseudo-intellectual privilege that they’ve bastardized since the cultural revolution of the 1960s. That revolution promoted transparency above all else as it relates to large institutions. And the calls for transparency mostly took place on college campuses. But on those same campuses we – as fraternity men – sit in the face of that transparency. We are members of a private boys’ club which irritates those “outs” because they don’t know what we “ins” know. What they have are anecdotal accounts of the worst elements of fraternity life that they desperately try to explode into vast generalizations to define all of us. And what do we have as a response? One hundred years ago, the first brothers of Sigma Pi Fraternity would have brushed off the accusations of the “outs” by publicly ridiculing the use of extreme examples to define the whole. Fast forward to today and instead of calling out extremists and zealots, we’ve been reduced to taking personal offense to negative comments from the “outs” when we should be hitting them back even harder.

In one hundred years’ time, Greek leaders have gone from a group of men who took pride in openly promoting the virtues of fraternity membership to a group of men who mostly walk in lockstep with a student life industry that is more concerned with extricating itself from any risks or any possible offenses than it is concerned with introducing college students to scientific, biological reality.

I hope that Sigma Pi can lead the way for the Greek world and turn the tide back in the direction of being inherently proud of fraternity membership… and soon.

Several weeks ago my fraternity (Sigma Pi) made the entire history of our national magazine (The Emerald) available online. For those who enjoy reading about the history of our organization and learning more about the true foundations of the fraternal movement, this online database is a treasure trove of great reading. As soon as the database was made available I looked up those issues of the magazine which were published after my chapter was initially chartered in 1969 and then rechartered again in 1991. I made electronic copies of the relevant pages related to those charterings and shared them them with my chapter brothers.

As I read through some of the old issues of the magazine I noticed a distinct tone in many of the articles. The tone that many of these articles are written in is much different than what we encounter in today’s writings and discussions in the Greek world. The tone of these articles is stronger than what we read and hear today. It is not an inherently weakened tone nor an apologetic tone. The early writers in our fraternity were strong in their convictions and proud of their membership in Sigma Pi. I imagine that the men who wrote these articles would give a passing chuckle at the heavily biased, anti-fraternity, anti-male drivel that many extreme sources are publishing these days. They’d read an article that talks about the “dark power” of fraternities and pity the writer – not attempt to glean some greater bit of wisdom from this obviously biased perspective.

My long-time readers know that I remained engaged in my fraternity beyond graduation by serving as a local, regional, and national volunteer. And during the 11 years that I’ve spent as a volunteer, I’ve seen and heard a whole bunch. When I began as a volunteer, I joined a national association presumably focused on providing assistance and guidance to fraternity advisors. My membership in that organization lasted about two years. I left that group when I realized that it was not an organization focused on building and strengthening Greek life at the chapter-level, which is the area that interested me the most given my volunteer position at the time. Rather, this was an organization focused on providing university employees working with fraternities and sororities different methods of controlling their students, limiting their university’s liability in worst case scenarios, and implementing more “campus progressive” policies on Greek organizations (i.e. policies that clandestinely break down traditional gender roles by forcing fierce repercussions on men who act masculine as well as women who act feminine).

In short, the strong, masculine perspective that is evident in the writing of my fraternity’s early leaders is absent today. In fact, it’s not just gone – it’s blasphemous on today’s hyper-sensitive college campuses.

I’ve written a commentary about how and why the “campus progressive” mentality was formed and is now spreading in Greek Life. And I plan on publishing that commentary in the near future after I’ve revised it some more. But I thought it would be useful to show you one of the early writings from my fraternity’s magazine to serve as baseline for that future commentary. To that end, I downloaded the first issue of The Emerald and I couldn’t stop reading it. After the opening editorial, I was hooked by the first opinion piece which followed. This piece was titled Measure of the College Fraternity as an Institution and was written by Brother Ralph Stanley Bauer of our Phi Chapter at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

For those of you who are highly engaged in fraternity and sorority life, I think you’ll enjoy reading Brother Bauer’s thoughts which were first published 102 years ago. It is amazing that over a century later, many of the same criticisms stand against our organizations. The difference between today and back then is that the “muck-rackers,” as Brother Bauer calls them, are now empowered and working on college campuses! These muck-rackers are quick to throw away over a century of history in an effort to reprimand college students for a perceived deviation from their strict, mucky definition of Greek values.

Again, I’ve written more on this which I’ll publish here soon. In the meantime, though, I’ll end my thoughts here and yield this space to Brother Bauer. I hope you’ll find his commentary as satisfying as I did when I first read it.

Measure of the College Fraternity as an InstitutionBy RALPH STANLEY BAUER, Phi Chapter

WHEN a modern and practical man of affairs desires to know whether it is best for his son, a freshman in a university, to become a member of a fraternity, he is likely to ask two questions. One is: What is the demeanor of “frat men” during their careers as undergraduates? The other question that he will ask is: “What do “frat men” amount to after they leave college?” Of these two, the latter question is of the more practical consequence. Fraternities mould men. As they do this work well or poorly, they are successful or unsuccessful. The efficiency of a factory is never determined by the appearance of its product in its unfinished state and when it is only half way through the factory; only the finished product of the factory indicates whether the establishment is serviceable. Moreover, it is not usual to judge the usefulness of a factory by the poor quality of a very small portion of its products, but it is customary to study rather the average quality of the entire output.

Yet there are certain “muck-rakers” who are criticising college fraternities in a manner in which they would not think of criticising other organizations. They forget that the test of the efficiency and usefulness of a college organization is not to be found in the conduct, appearance and demeanor of the student members of the organization. They fail to remember that the test is to be found in the finished product and not in the half-finished material. They say that fraternity men are more attracted by outside amusements than by their studies; that they do not have time to do their class work because of fraternity activities, and that fraternity men are, as a class, sporty. Suppose that, for purposes of argument, we grant all these allegations to be true; does it indicate anything if they are true? Do not these same boisterous, rollicking, fun-loving students become real, live, industrious, useful citizens. In the modern university there is no place for a man who is slow; other students may sympathize with such a man, but they have very little patience with him. Real strenuosity is a part of college life, and it is also a part of business and professional life. What appears to some old fossils to be a sporty and wicked atmosphere is just the kind of an atmosphere that said fossils need to live in for a short time, in order that the stale and sour gases of musty antiquity may be met by a suitable antidote.

These old-time traducers of college fraternities go still further and say that the lives of some college men have been wrecked because of associations formed by them in fraternities during their careers as college students. But suppose even that we grant that this is a fact; have not some persons ruined their lives by forming evil associations while attending Sunday School? Yet, who would dare to argue that, for this reason, the Sunday School should not be accorded a place among our useful institutions?

Educators are agreed that a child is not a small adult and therefore should not be expected to act as an adult would. Neither should the same conduct be expected of young men of ages ranging from sixteen to twenty-six as one would expect of men of forty. Young men of student age need more of recreation, amusement and diversion than do older men. Many of the best forms of wholesome enjoyment are supplied to the student by the fraternity. All this aids in the development of the individual and makes him better fitted to “mix” with other men and take a real place in the world after he leaves college.

We trust that no one will take what has been said concerning recreation and amusement to indicate that the writer has any inclination to believe in the absurd and vicious doctrine that a college man must “sow his wild oats.” No more pernicious proposition was ever put before young men. It is difficult to understand how so base a view of life should ever have gained a footing anywhere in a civilized and Christian country.

If the writer had the space necessary, he would be glad to go into a somewhat full discussion of the reasons why a fraternity man, upon graduation, other things being equal, has received a better training than has a “barb.” Many reasons might be given to show why so large a number of our most successful business and professional men have sprung from the ranks of the college fraternities. Surely, organizations that have produced nearly all of the recent presidents of the United States cannot be wholly bad.

Results count. Vague theories and gloomy foreboding about the “cussedness” of the whole situation cannot impress a man who thinks. Let the great college fraternities of America stand upon their brilliant record of past achievement, and let us hope that the future will equal or, if possible, surpass it in glorious results.

We need more people with this mindset working on our campuses! This is the perspective that our young men and women need to understand. The angry muck-rackers should be shunned from our movement, not employed and empowered by our campuses!